Movie review: ‘Cakemaker’ is a bittersweet drama

Al Alexander More Content Now

Tuesday

Jul 3, 2018 at 3:56 PMJul 3, 2018 at 3:56 PM

“The Cakermaker” isn’t your average slice of hunky Aryan pastry crimping with a sweet Israeli tart. It’s really about 80-odd years of geopolitical atrocity born of the Third Reich evolving into an uneasy peace between Germany and Israel. It’s a fragile relationship rookie writer-director Ofir Raul Graizer deftly folds into an ethnic pie involving a gay Berliner and a widowed Israeli — both mourning the same lover.

The deceased, Oren (Roy Miller), was done in by a sweet tooth that could only be satiated by the decadent chocolate confections concocted by Tomas (Tim Kalkhof), the Berlin pastry chef the Israeli regularly visited on his monthly business trips to Germany. Unfortunately for Oren’s cafe-owning wife, Anat (Sarah Adler, equaling her excellent work in “Foxtrot”), Tomas served more than just cake to her cheating hubby. Fate (or was it karma?) catches up with Oren when he’s killed in a car crash near his home in Jerusalem, news that fails to reach an increasingly worried Tomas until weeks later.

Like Marina, the secret lover in the Oscar-winning “A Fantastic Woman,” Tomas possesses a key Oren left behind. Curious, he travels to Jerusalem to see what it unlocks in his man’s gym locker. It’s a bright-red Speedo, natch, that Tomas lovingly commences wearing to bed. You’d think that would be that, but Tomas’ curiosity draws him in the direction of Anat’s struggling cafe, where he offers to lend a hand without ever revealing his connection to Oren. You can pretty much guess the rest. Surprise isn’t Graizer’s strong suit. But he does know how to tell a compelling tale about cultures clashing, as the combatants learn to put the past behind via their shared interests and convenient ability to speak English, the language of the nation that put both their countries back on the map after WWII. That would be us, of course.

That Graizer does this through the prism of food — glorious food — more than whets your appetite for an allegory that’s both kosher and sweet. I particularly admired his juxtaposition of Tomas’ solitary approach to staging a feast with the communal method favored by Hebrews. A theme deepened by the irony of Tomas’ imaginative creations being born in the staid environment of Anat’s kosher kitchen, much to the displeasure of her by-the-Torah brother-in-law, Moti (Zohar Shtrauss), who is more than a little suspicious of Anat’s new “helper.”

It’s a feeling that’s contagious, as you too begin to wonder what taciturn Tomas is up to in winning the affections of both Anat and her young son, Itai (Tamir Ben Yehuda). Could it be he simply needs to be as close to Oren’s spirit as he can get in the wake of his lover’s death? It certainly seems that way when you see the unmistakable expression of love on Tomas’ face when he slips on Oren’s old clothes, garments Anat gifts him unaware he’s the man who ripped holes in the fabric of her marriage.

It’s inevitable that Anat’s suspicions will grow — along with her desires — the more time she spends with Tomas in the intimacy of her steamy kitchen. Your instinct is to swoon, but that hinky feeling about Tomas’ unspoken motives prevents it, right up to their first kiss. You also find it just a little too convenient that a gay man might be open to suddenly “switching teams.” It rings a bit false, but there’s no doubt Kalkhof and Adler work their darndest to sell it.

Far more successful is the movie’s striking metaphor for two nations born out of an unspeakable past trying to work together despite growing fissures associated with Germany’s open door to Middle Eastern refugees. Like Anat and Tomas, much is working against this relationship, but love — that great healer — just might be the right ingredient to leaven a hate that’s long been baked into the cake.